Aqua vs Luna
アクア / ルナ
Aqua comes from Apple UI and Luna from Microsoft UI. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Aqua
Mac OS X's design language of buttons you want to lick. Jelly gloss, pinstripes, deep shadows and the genie effect staged digital components as objects you could touch, and set the terms for UI throughout the 2000s. What the web made of it with images is Web 2.0 Gloss.
Luna
Windows XP's look: blue taskbar, green Start button, rounded windows and a meadow wallpaper repainting the gray office machine as household optimism.
| Aqua | Luna | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2000–2014 | 2001–2006 |
| Family | Apple UI | Microsoft UI |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Gel-gloss buttons / Pinstriped grounds / Deep drop shadows / Metaphors of water and light | The blue taskbar / The green Start button / Rounded frames / Meadow-and-sky optimism |
| Best used for | Recreating 2000s digital culture with the texture it actually had · Making what is clickable read at once as a pressable object | Using early 2000s PC culture as a device for nostalgia · Assembling a bright, friendly home facing screen through saturation |
| Type | No shadow on text, weighted to stay legible over gloss | Bold sans in white, contrasted hard against the blue ground |
| Composition | Components evenly spaced, gaps left for shadows to fall into | A horizontal bar along the bottom, one primary control at its left |
| Material | A hard white highlight above, reflection and deep shadow below | Saturated blue and green, frames swelled by rounding and gradient |
| Caution | Gloss and shadow applied evenly to every component hides what is actually pressable, leaving texture where hierarchy should be. | Copying only the palette while dropping the rounding and swell leaves the colors floating, and none of the optimism arrives. |